Flatlander Pawn & Gun Vine St, Hays

Angelina, We appreciate your review! You are correct that I think most of the negativity comes from a misunderstanding of how a pawn shop works. We provide short term collateral loans and give cash on the stop. The interest in Kansas is 10% per month. If they won't pay they lose their item but it has ZERO effect on their credit score and we don't hound them for back interest or for the loan to be repaid. That isn't the case with other short term loan options. We are glad to be serving Hays and happy we can be here to help people out when they get in a tight spot. Thanks again for the great review!

Michael, We have had this conversation in person but I would like to put the record straight with this review. We pawned items that ended up being stolen from you. You hadn't reported them stolen at the time of the pawn and weren't even aware of the theft for months after it occurred. The person that pawned the item lost them and they were placed on the shelf for sale. Your wife was in the store and saw the items and brought to our attention they were yours and stolen. The process at that point was for you to reach out to the local police and file a report. We hold the items back and wait for the police to contact us. After informing your wife of this she began to get irate and yelled and threatened our staff. We have a zero tolerance for that kind of behavior and asked her to leave. When she refused we contacted the police to explain the situation. The police report was filed and they found the serial numbers that showed the item registered to you. We returned the items to the police and provided them with the name of the person that pawned them. We loaned money on the items. So in the end you received your stolen items back and we were out the money we loaned on them. We have to wait for restitution from the person that stole the items, which rarely happens. This doesn't happen to us very often but it does happen. We do our best to vet every person we purchase from or pawn to ensure the items are not stolen. When we find they are stolen we are able to provide the merchandise back to the victim and we are out the money we paid. So in this case were able to assist with recovering items you never knew were stolen. You were able to use those items in your business again. So I fail to understand why you are upset with us when we helped you out and it actually cost us money out of our pocket. If we can help you in the future please feel free to reach out and discuss with our manager.

Cody, I'm sorry we feel this way. When providing a loan for your jewelry we look at what we can sell it for if it falls off of pawn. Usually this means about a third of the wholesale value of jewelry. Jewelry does have a high retail markup so it can seem we are low based on what you paid for the item. Being a pawn shop we can't justify selling jewelry at a high margin when it falls off of pawn. So we base our loan value on the wholesale value. Yes, we do try to call you before you items falls off pawn. This is a service we provide because we don't want you to lose your item. For you to lose the item you would have had to not paid any interest or payments on the item for 90 days. So we hadn't seen any payment from you for 90 days before we call. At that point we have given you money and we haven't seen any return of that money. We can't be responsible for you paying your bills. This is the same as any other bill you might have. So even if you lose your item we still keep the money we loaned to you. If you sell your items we do offer more money. We base our loan off of Kansas law that regulates pawn shop activities and cap our interest at 10% per month. If we can help you with anything in the future please stop in the store. We're happy to do so. -Flatlander

Justin, I'm sorry you had a bad experience. Without getting into the specifics of how a pawn shop operates just because we have cash come into the door that day doesn't mean we are able to loan it back out that same day. We do have to process the money and account for it correctly. Also, we do reserve the right to refuse any item for pawn or purchase. It could have been that we were not interesting in making on loan on the item you brought in that day. While I don't believe 'Pawn Stars' represents an accurate portrayal of the day to day in a normal pawn shop I do find it entertaining. I hope you found someone to make a loan on your item. -Flatlander